Toyota recall points to pedal misapplication

As we all know Toyota has had an on going problem with recall’s over the past few months, we reported on their unintended acceleration issue being linked to 100 deaths, back in March this year. However reports from the U.S.Department of Transportation give a conclusion that the faults were down to driver error, rather than vehicle defect.

More than 3,000 supposed faults of acceleration issues in Toyota’s have been know leading to this investigation. The Wall Street Journal reports that various data recorders within Toyota’s vehicles, discovered that at the time of these sudden acceleration accidents, the throttle pedals were wide open, without the brakes being applied. This finding suggests that the drivers stamped on the accelerator rather than the brakes, whilst trying to avoid these crashes.

Although Toyota were swift in sanctioning a recall, only one out of the 75 known fatal crashes can be directly pointed to a fault with the vehicle. Even then this single incident involving a California highway patrolman, was found to be down to the floor mat trapping the throttle pedal.

Officials at the U.S.T.D have publicly stated that they are yet to find any electronic faults that could end up causing an accident. It has been confirmed that there have been floor mat and sticky accelerator pedal defects, which Toyota has responded to quickly with a recall. So after more than eight million Toyota vehicles had been recalled, it seems that the Japanese Automaker may have suffered unjustly. Could these latest findings go someway to rebuilding Toyotas reputation ?